In premium class aircraft cabins (e.g., business class, first class), passengers are increasingly afforded larger, more spacious suites that provide privacy from other passengers within the aircraft through various panels, doors, and other cabin monuments that separate the passenger in the suite from the rest of the cabin. However, while attempting to give travelers a highly customized and private travel experience, aircraft cabin designs must still comply with safety and security regulations that regulate a passenger's ability to ingress and egress from any type of seating arrangement in emergencies and/or crash situations. Additional regulations provide aisle clearance specifications that stipulate required amounts of aisle clearance space for safe passage of passengers throughout the aircraft during both normal and emergency situations. Also, security regulations stipulate that flight attendants and other members of the airline crew must have clear sight lines of the passengers within the passenger suites without any obstructions from cabin furniture, suite panels, doors, or any other installed aircraft cabin monuments.
The design of front row passenger suites can be complicated due to the configuration of the suites with respect to forward cabin monuments that are installed forward of the front row passenger suites because the front row passenger suites may be have different relative orientations to the forward cabin monuments than the relative orientations between successive rows of passenger suites. For example, the forward cabin monuments may include various types of cabin furniture such as storage compartments, galley compartments, electronics compartments, and the like. For some front row passenger suite configurations, an aisle-side edge of the suite where a panel door from which a passenger ingresses or egresses from the suite is installed may be in line with an aisle-side edge of the forward cabin monuments. For other front row passenger suite configurations, the aisle-side edge of the suite may be misaligned with the aisle-side edge of the front cabin monuments, increasing the difficulty of designing panel door assemblies that can be adapted between aircraft platforms and configurations.
There is a corresponding need to equip non-suite passenger seats (e.g., coach class seats) with systems that provide privacy and a more intimate environment. Heretofore, use of privacy panels has been limited to deployment on a common armrest disposed between two business class seats.